International Social Science Journal (Chinese Edition)

No.2, 2022

Arrivals in the Americas: creating new socio-ecological landscapes

(Abstract)

Lise Sedrez

When Europeans arrived in Americas in the fifteenth century, they became migrants and brought weapons with them, and introduced ideas, harmful bacteria, animals and plants, as well as a particular power-economic structure into the new continent. The socio-ecological landscape witnessed drastic changes there, which enabled Europeans’ invasion as if by the will of God, and a great calamity to indigenous peoples. In the sixteenth century, the ‘Columbian Exchange’ of weeds, animals and diseases re-shaped the continent profoundly. The speed and width of species spreading in the period were unprecedented in history. Indeed, now the landscape in Americas had been a totally new one, which was neither the desire of indigenous peoples, nor Euporean invaders could have imagined. Instead, it had been the result of the synergy between biological and social drivers.